Wednesday, November 9, 2011

"A Spy In The House Of Putin"

Vladimir Putin and his wife Lyudmila Putina attend the Easter service at Moscow's Christ the Savior Cathedral in April 2011.

November 07, 2011

By Alexander Mannheim, Daisy Sindelar

The relationship between Russian Prime Minister and probable future
President Vladimir Putin and his wife of 28 years, Lyudmila, has been
alternately portrayed as a nightmare union and a love story for the ages.

While the truth probably lies somewhere in between, new revelations
about Putin's KGB career in East Germany suggest marital harmony was not
high on the future leader's agenda.

Erich Schmidt-Eenboom, a journalist and expert on German intelligence,
says he has proof a female West German spy was able to infiltrate the
Putin household during the family's five-year stay in Dresden, East
Germany. Her discovery? That Putin was an enthusiastic womanizer and a
violent bully who beat his wife.

Schmidt-Eenboom, who has written numerous books and papers on Germany's
BND foreign intelligence agency, maintains that the agent, a young woman
operating under the name Lenchen, or Lenochka, was tasked with digging
up information about the KGB's military and economic activities in
southern Germany.

"But she quickly became friends with Lyudmila Putina and became a kind
of trusted confidante for her," he says. "Lyudmila told her that
Vladimir frequently beat her, and often cheated on her, that he had had
trysts with other women."...MORE